


The Only News I know

by middlemarch



Series: Daffodil Universe [12]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Bedside Vigils, Divorce, Estrangement, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, Prayer, Romance, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:56:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9236144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: In extremisis a Latin phrase meaning "in the farthest reaches" or "at the point of death."





	

“It’ll be tonight, the crisis. You ought to stay,” Anne said. The lamp was lit and already battling the evening pressing its face against the small window.

Jed had never heard her voice so kind, so free of spite or self-aggrandizement. It crossed his mind that this was the nurse Miss Nightingale had wanted to make of her purported protégé and he shook his head a little at the thought of all that must have happened to make this moment so rare. She even seemed to know he was not denying her and waited for him to ask the question that must come next.

“You’re sure?” 

He looked at Anne, her tired face and stained, rumpled dress, her collar askew as Mary’s never seemed to be, had never seemed to be before she’d been taken ill, when she still made her rounds on the wards and had worked every spare moment; he remembered her that way even as he saw her lying motionless in the bed, everything around her bleached—the linen, the last fading light of day, the faint beginning of night, her cheeks and lips pale. Anne took a breath that was not quite a sigh and glanced over at Mary.

“Yes. You know I am, you’ve trusted me with her this long. You’ve seen it with the men, they all come to this point,” Anne replied.

He had—trusted her. More than anyone, in fact, when he’d first understood just how ill Mary was. A sick boy had called out for him that night but quietly, grimacing as he gestured for Jed to approach and he’d wondered that Mary didn’t rise up from her straight-backed chair and offer the private a drink from the battered, tin cup beside the bed or move to adjust the pillows. Jed had had to strain a little to hear the boy’s hoarse voice, the awkwardness of calling attention to the sleeping nurse making him even more halting, his stutter more pronounced. Jed had been surprised as well, to find Mary asleep and had raised his voice just enough to be clearly heard but so he would not disturb the men around them or embarrass her too greatly; she had barely spoken to him for the past few weeks and he was loath to make himself her alarum as the initial sally. He needn’t have worried—she barely stirred when he called her name and even when he laid a hand on her shoulder. He’d felt the fever through her sprigged calico bodice and she had burned against him like a brand when he’d lifted her in his arms. She was limp and lighter than he would have thought; had she been eating regularly? He hadn’t seen her at dinner since they’d argued so bitterly but he’d supposed she ate with Samuel Diggs or at her desk. She’d opened her eyes when he’d put her down on her bed and he’d found her looking at him in some confusion as he unlaced her boots, taking care not to touch her more than was necessary. He didn’t want anything in the moment other than to help her to bed, to let her sleep and rise refreshed in the morning, her fever broken. He had been torn about helping her undress further, the physician in him insistent she should not sleep in her stays, every other part of him arrested by the significance of the action and she had decided it, as she had so much else, murmuring “I’m tired” and turning her face from him, leaving him the blank purity of her bared neck, the dark shadow of her chignon. He’d pulled up the patched quilt from the foot of the bed and hoped the rest would be cure even as he worried it could not.

When she hadn’t come down for breakfast the next morning and no one had seen her, even the usually impassive Mr. Diggs showing concern, he’d walked the flights of stairs and knocked on her door. Jed told himself he heard her bid him enter and had gone in, but whatever he’d convinced himself he had heard had not been anything coherent; she didn’t respond when he called her name and was somehow even hotter when he laid a hand on her forehead though the dawn usually brought a respite. Mary had opened her eyes then and he’d seen she was in pain before she spoke, her voice a little broken, her apology cut short when she could not lift her head without moaning. He knew her to be stoic about bodily suffering, her own or another’s, so the uncontrolled sound of distress told him more than she intended as did her acquiescence to his instruction that she stay abed. She hadn’t objected when he slipped and called her Molly and he would have wondered what that meant if he had not been so worried about her tachypnea, how she trembled when she tried to sit up, how she winced when she failed and fell back into the tangled bedclothes. 

It had hardly taken him a moment to decide he must ask Nurse Hastings to care for Mary, that there was no one else competent enough to look after her. He hadn’t dallied, asking each person he met where they’d last seen Nurse Hastings till he stood before her, scarcely ten minutes later, and had requested she do whatever she could for the Head Nurse, who was laid low. Anne had been skeptical at first but he’d already been desperate, thinking of Mary’s thready pulse, how slow she’d been to respond to him, and he hadn’t hesitated to forgo demands and proceed direct to begging her, appealing to her every vanity, everything short of offering her money which he felt would insult her pretentions to noble idealism. Finally, he’d just said, “Please, Anne. Please,” and she had looked at him without disguising her regard and had, thank God! agreed to nurse Mary as much like a private nurse as she could while managing the wards with Mother Mary Veronica. He’d thought Mary’s hardy constitution and Anne’s skilled nursing would be a match for the disease but it had become clear he had, for once, been too optimistic.

“You know how it is with camp fever and she’s had a bad case,” Anne said, reminding him he stood in Mary’s bedroom and how his hopes had been dashed. 

It hadn’t occurred to him that she could fall ill, as he hadn’t wondered about Mansion House’s bricks crumbling, the chimney collapsing with a breath against its broad base, or that the moon could be swallowed by the bay and fail to ever rise again. Even in their estrangement, when it seemed she would never again allow him any intimacy, as icily formal as he’d once expected a Teutonic Baroness to be, he had still not been willing to accept the fundamental risk of her human frailty, sure that her convictions and resurrected, replenished faith made her indomitable as a Roman empress; the moment he had held her in his arms, it had all gone, that comforting certainty. He had begun to pray, under his breath, during surgery, as he walked past her closed door, as if the frequency of his devotions could confirm God’s existence and by extension, His benevolent regard for Mary. How his childhood pastor would have beamed to see the bane of his catechism classes murmuring every prayer he could recall, swiftly, slowly, hoping for an answer, Anne’s red-cheeked pride in her nursing prowess, Sister Mary Isabella’s shy glance at the rosary she’d looped around Mary’s slender wrist, the coral beads bright against Mary’s pale skin, the plain white cuff of her nightdress. He had heard little that suggested his prayers had made any difference but he could not stop trying. Anne had been confident the first few days, shooing him away, scolding him that Mary needed uninterrupted rest and that he’d put the Head Nurse in **her** charge, but there had been a subtle shift when the days became a week and Mary’s illness worsened, when she was barely able to rise from her bed and the trays that were sent up were returned to the kitchen nearly untouched. 

“Not you? You won’t look after her any more?” Jed asked. 

He had uncharitable thoughts about Anne, he knew, the whisper in his brain that she was shirking, that she would abandon Mary when she was needed most; the rational part of him recognized that she was diligent and exhausted and that whatever animosity she may have had against Mary as her superior had been dispersed or extinguished by the change in role.

“I’ve done all I can for her. She doesn’t want me,” Anne answered. Was it fatigue that made her pause or something else? “She calls for you when her fever rises, only for you.”

He could have had a thousand responses but there was only one: _I should have been there_ , a painful guilt he couldn’t afford to indulge now. He understood Anne had acquiesced to his request initially in part because of her insatiable, prurient curiosity about Mary, her wish to judge the other woman for the plainness of her nightdress, the scant, precious items in her shabby trunk unimpressive, to rummage in Mary’s dreams if she could, listening to every word said in delirium and savoring her own critical speculations about the meaning thereof. But there was not even the hint of that in her tone now; she spoke only to tell him the truth and was content to let him divine the import.

“She does?” he repeated, wishing Anne to say more, how Mary looked, whether she opened her eyes and stopped herself, whether she reached for him, absent but longed for. He wanted to know what she did when he didn’t come.

“When she is able to or rather, when she is insensible. The first few days, she woke and was herself, the Nurse Phinney we all know, and she asked for little. She thanked me and she tried to read but her eyes were too sore, so she was quiet. She was easy to nurse, I suppose women generally are…But the last few days, the fever’s taken her fiercely. It’s been all I can do, to settle her when she wants you,” she said reflectively. She caught sight of his expression, the torment she brought him with her words. “I can’t say you being here would have helped. When they’re delirious, even giving them what they want so badly, it doesn’t always work. I’ve seen a man dying of thirst push away a cup of water. But, these things are mysterious, you being here may be enough where I am most certainly not. You should stay,” Anne finished.

Had having a wish be granted ever been so torturous? To be cajoled to stay with Mary, to care for her himself, it was everything he could have wanted except that it was due to her trembling on the edge of the abyss; or rather, he trembled—to lose her, to lose himself with her, the clamor of the needle irresistible if she did not recover. He would not let himself think the words, to imagine the future, the morning when he woke and she did not. He could not be soothed by even Henry Hopkins’s careful, solemn solace about God’s beneficence, the never-ending Light they would all encounter, Henry’s calm confidence in Mary’s salvation and his less-justified conviction that Jed too would be welcomed Home. It was less than ashes in Jed’s mouth, less than the acrid fume gunpowder left in the lungs after battle, in the cannon-blasted field, the squalid paucity of mind the needle left in its rapid, tidal retreat. He wanted only Mary, whole and healthy, even if she walked out of Mansion House without a backward glance at him; he wanted most some reconciliation with her, not a return to their previous condition but an improvement, to mend the wound between them with her tenacity and insight, his hard-won, much-needed humility.

“What will you say—to McBurney and the rest?” he asked, more concerned that he should be able to care for her properly and without interruption than any thought of gossip or reputation.

“Only McBurney, Captain McBurney that is, matters—the rest of Mansion House is inured to these ‘lapses,’ long-accustomed to making accommodations to the situation, and Nurse Phinney is so generally admired, not one would withhold any treatment that might be said to save her. Captain McBurney values excellence, or what he perceives it to be, which is more often diligence and a tedious focus on the particular; I shall simply tell him Nurse Phinney’s illness is now beyond my expertise, without elaboration, and that only a physician’s qualifications, your extensive training abroad, gives you the ability to mitigate her suffering. I shall say it like that and take my time, he likes so very much to be spoken to as if in a translation from the Latin or as if he were among the most elevated minds, that he would gain by the company he keeps a certain reputation for eloquence and philosophical acumen,” she said. Jed would have smiled at her accurate assessment, if he could had spared any emotion for her. “As if such delicate rhetoric has anything to do with medicine, with dying and how to keep a person from it, as if he knows anything about what is truly required here, shut up in that office with his papers.”

“And I—what shall I do for her?”

“If her fever rises, a cool compress may help, offering her water if she’ll take it, some tincture of willow-bark, a spoonful of honey. There’s a little left. Other than that, I think—you might talk to her, sometimes if they know someone is waiting for them, they’ll make an effort,” she began, the veteran of many vigils. _Sickbed vigils_ , he asserted to himself, nothing else could be allowed.

“An effort?” The idea that Mary was capable of anything taxing now seemed ludicrous. She was half-way to a wraith and so still…

“To live. You should talk to her, tell her, oh, whatever it is she wants to hear or what she needs to. You must know, don’t you?” Anne said. “Tell her the truth, if you can. Lie if you have to.” 

He nodded at her, the captain taking his orders from the general. She glanced down at Mary, who seemed to sleep through their conversation though her rest was not restorative but the typhus wasting her, and his eyes followed; he had looked at Anne spoke as she spoke, as much as he could, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from looking back to Mary, watching her wishing to find she’d surprised them with her gaze, aching, half-asleep but Mary with her faculties intact, the woman he loved.

“It may work. Anyone could see how much she cares for you—and it seems you might care for her, nearly as much. I’ll see you’re not disturbed,” she added, touching his forearm lightly as she walked to the door, kind as her words had meant to be, though they echoed in his mind as an accusation _Nearly as much_. _Nearly…_

The door closed behind Anne and he was alone with Mary. Jed thought fleetingly of fairy tale princesses who slept or were enchanted and what it took to awaken them; Mary would have wrinkled her nose and pointed out how far she was from a princess, a title he’d never given her even when he mocked her upon her arrival, calling her “Marchioness” and watching her pause on the stairs. At the time, he had imagined he’d scored a point off her, shaken that prim Yankee decorum, but reflecting on her now, all they’d been through, he thought that was only a part of it, the smallest part; she had been curious and assessing, determining how to react, she had liked the attention even if she would not have admitted it then. How long had it been since he had seen her look at him with such consideration? What could he say that would make her open her eyes and see him beside her, that could provoke her to look upon him with her former tenderness unadulterated?

He sat down in the chair beside her bed; he was old enough that he felt its discomfort immediately, the ache begun in his back the way a woman might complain of her labor. _Adultery_ , that was the word his mind had circled around, what had come between them before Mary had fallen ill. He’d been unfaithful to Eliza, that he readily granted, even if not in the generally agreed upon form; society might dismiss all his behavior as only a series of questionable phrases, minor peccadillos of touch, as he had not bedded Mary, installed her as his mistress in some rented cottage, but he knew he had broken his vows to the woman he’d married. And though he hadn’t seen it thus, Mary insisted he’d been unfaithful to her as well, withholding from her how he’d written to Eliza, his hopes and fears, allowing there to be secrets between them when all they had was the possibility for complete openness and acceptance. How Mary had argued with him, how articulate in the face of his clumsy explanations, how acerbically incisive as he tried to soothe her, falling back into old ways as if she were an ordinary woman to be cajoled and petted into acquiescence. He had not trusted her, she contended when he suggested it was himself he had doubted and Eliza, and anything else was an excuse, a sop to be fed to a baby. Her voice had broken over that last word and he had thought he might then console her, apologize and appease her, had taken a step forward in the moment she turned her face away but he was wrong; she had turned away, graceful in her furious despair as she was to him in all ways, and she’d refused him. She had not sounded sorrowful or angry or even empty, she had sounded like she did when she spoke of Corporal Rose’s injury and his chances of recovery, practical and thoughtful, his earnest Mary. _His_ no more she told him and he had taken hold of something, a chair’s back, a table’s edge, he hadn’t noticed what only that without it, he’d felt like falling. The floor would not have held him—perhaps he was melodramatic, then if not now, but it had been annihilation except for the carved wood in his grasp.

If only he had spoken sooner—or not at all! He had watched the post as discreetly as he could; he had not believed it of himself, but he had begun to pray for a letter, even as he admitted the absurdity, that an ineffable, omnipotent God would somehow intervene for such a petty matter, the safe arrival of a message that agreed to the dissolution of a marriage sanctified in His name. It hadn’t mattered. He had still found old devotions coming to him as he lay down to try and sleep, feeling the absence of Mary beside him though he’d never known her presence, whether she would nestle close, her head on his chest or allow there to be a space between them that he was welcome to bridge with his hand or by breathing when she did, their souls rising and falling together. He had hoped, for so long it seemed, that he would discover her preference and then he had started, with each passing day, to lose that shining, sustaining hope. He had felt confident, with his growing dread, that he had done right to spare her her own share. And then Mrs. Gibbons had arrived.

Mrs. Abigail Hopper Gibbons had walked into Mansion House without any fanfare but in retrospect, Jed would have appreciated the ranged trumpets with their silk flags, their bright, demanding warning. He had been busy with his work, preoccupied with his worries and had assumed she was another civilian without any real grasp of the War’s burden and an over-estimate of her own abilities to help; he hadn’t thought the world could hold more than one woman like Dorothea Dix, as unalike as Mrs. Gibbons proved to be, but he supposed it was only another lesson in how ignorant and unimaginative he was, how much he was truly like Hale and McBurney and Summers, all the men who decided they were the arbiters of every situation. There was talk of the hospital in Point Lookout, Hammond General, how it would operate and with whom, the plans for a thousand men or more, but he was interested only at a distance and sat in the meetings with McBurney with an eagerness to return to the ward or the next boy’s operation, even Mary’s clinic for the camp’s women. The older woman saw it and pleasantly suggested he be allowed to attend to matters suiting the Executive Officer better; she was calm and firm and he had not seen how ruthlessly charming she could be in her soberly fashionable dress, the picture of a New York society matron and mother. He’d been relieved when she spoke, more so when McBurney assented and he’d hurried from the office, leaving them to what he anticipated would be an interminable discussion about hospital management and their mutual pitched sieges against Miss Dix. He was curious only about Mary’s assessment of their visitor, her comparison with the Superintendent, whether she perceived Mrs. Gibbons to be better suited to managing the female nurses given her experience as a wife and mother than solitary Miss Dix; he thought maybe this was a question she would answer, a beginning they could make.

He had not gotten to ask her for several days, an influx of sick boys taking up every spare moment. He had almost been exhausted enough to forget about the letter he expected, to forgo his painful ruminations; he had been tired enough that he’d fallen asleep during the nightly recursion, sometimes even in the officer’s parlor, waking to find someone had covered him with what passed for a spare blanket, once being hazily shepherded by Mary to his room, both of them wordless even as she knelt to take off his boots and drew the counterpane over him. Mrs. Gibbons had left just as the peak of misery had passed and there had been a day or two of blessed ordinary work reclaiming them. Mary returned to writing letters for the men and serving the evening coffee instead of assisting at every surgery and changing dressings still damp from the laundresses’ cauldrons. He had imagined the world regained its regular shape and it seemed that would be its own end for them; that was the explanation he gave himself as to why he had answered when she mentioned Mrs. Gibbons’s offer,

“Perhaps you should go.”

She had been quiet then, just looking at him with those lovely dark eyes, before she replied.

“What haven’t you told me, Jedediah?”

He should have remembered, understood, how intelligent she was and how intuitive. That she would not agree or simply stalk out, would not urge him to dissuade her. He’d intended to tell her some of the truth, enough to satisfy her—how he feared she would be harmed by their relationship, that it, _they_ had no future and that Mansion House would become a prison for her and he her despised warden. She had argued each point and she at least was not holding anything back. He faltered under her onslaught, had exclaimed,

“I can’t stand it, Molly. I’ve written Eliza, oh! so many letters, asking, begging her for a divorce and she doesn’t write back. I can’t hold you hostage to a future that won’t come! I can’t bear to see you hurt by how I love you.”

Her face then—had it ever been so beautiful? He couldn’t remember anyone, man or woman, who had ever shown him their soul with such nakedness. He hadn’t thought he could find it so appealing to see a woman look at him without a hint of fondness or admiration and yet he had never been drawn to anyone as he was to Mary then.

“Is that all? All the truth or only what you mean to share?” she’d asked. “Is there more?”

The needle, he couldn’t help the image of it, that moment of surcease he’d always want, but he was able to push it away with the barest effort. She knew, in any case, she’d told him that in what seemed like another lifetime, less than a year ago. And now she knew the rest of what he did, how he thought and dreamed.

“No. Except that how I love you, that always seems to be more…and I’m afraid, too much, it’s more than we’ll ever be allowed.” He stood and waited for her response. A part of him wished she would laugh and tell him how she couldn’t believe what he had overlooked, a solution so obvious he must have been willfully blind to it. He was disappointed. 

“‘How you love me,’” she’d repeated. “With deception, where there should be none, as my superior, where we should be equal, with doubt you would not trust me with, as if I cannot care for you if I know how you feel, what you want. I don’t—God damn you, Jedediah, there is nothing you could keep from me that I wouldn’t want to know, except that you see me this way. Your fears, if you had shared them, your plans—they could have been ours, and even if we suffered, that would belong to both of us as well. I see,” she’d said and he knew she did, “I see how you have defended all these…decisions and why you tell me now, to leave you. I have not behaved as you expected though—and I won’t. And I won’t go. I came here, not for you, but for myself and the work I meant to do, mean to do, and that work is not done even if… Even if you have decided the conclusion to this, you may not decide anything else for me, how I feel, what I do. God bless you, I--”

That was all she had said and he had hardly heard more from her in the weeks since. She had been civil and polite and spoke readily about this boy and that, but she was more succinct and he felt the distance between them even as she handed him instruments or stood beside him at a boy’s bed, where in the absence of an audience, he could have put his arm around her waist or taken her hand in his more simply that his next breath. No letter came for him and if it had, he wasn’t sure what he would have done. There was an outbreak of camp fever, started among the contraband but quickly spread to the wards, the camp followers in their damp, drooping feathers and soiled lace, and he could pretend Mary’s relative silence was another consequence of the plague. He had, until that soldier had called him over and he’d felt her fever through her bodice, the heat of it as he held her in his arms, until Anne said Mary, _Molly_ his mind supplied yet, had called for him. She had had something to say, she had wanted him, she might still if Anne was right, enough to listen to him now.

He wasn’t sure what to say or how to begin but he found the words came more easily once he said her name,

“Molly.”

He told her about the hospital, the recoveries that had been expected and the wonderful news that Private Elliott would survive and that they hadn’t had to take young Michael Murphy’s leg, the jig he promised before being invalided home. He explained that he had seen to the women who arrived for her clinic hours with Matron acting as a complacent chaperone and that he had accompanied Samuel Diggs on his rounds through the contraband camp where a Miss Cassie was able to sit up and take the broth Miss Jenkins brought and send her fervent prayers for Mary’s own health. Mary didn’t stir. He poured some water in a tumbler and drank it down.

He talked to her about his childhood, stories he had thought to share in their own parlor or in the dawn when they woke and lay abed, in a future when the War ended and they had been miraculously united; how he and Ezra had run down to the shore, his sandy collections of shells and stones, the house-boys he had played with until he was no longer permitted, Miles’s older brothers Marcus and Tiberius, Tiberius who had been called “Berry” by everyone except Jed’s father, the giddy cousins who came en masse at the holidays and stayed for a month, how much he had loved his sunny Aunt Florence, wishing she was his mother for her gentle hands and devoted interest in him, how the scent of her, orris root and myrtle leaf, had soothed him when he had scarlet fever. His adventures—the rickety sailboat he and Berry took out on the bay and the storm that had caught them, the tricks he had tried to teach his father’s disinterested hounds Titus and Sulla, the arguments about his matriculation at the University, his medical studies, the embarkation on the ship that sailed for France and how he’d tasted the wind as soon as the anchor was up, not looking back, he spun them out and hoped, how he hoped she would open her eyes or give him some reply.

He laid a hand on her forehead and felt how her fever had risen; he wet a cloth for a compress and bathed her face with it, noting the violet shadows under her eyes but that her chapped lips were pale but not cyanotic. He stroked her neck with the linen and let himself count her pulse, trace the emergence of her clavicle from the neck of her muslin nightdress. Mary made a sound then and he held his breath but she seemed to sink deeper beneath the illness’s tide. Anne had said to tell her what she wanted to hear, what she needed and he hadn’t done it yet. He pulled his chair closer and began again.

He apologized for not telling her about the letters he wrote, what he had thought about before he’d picked up the pen, the passages scratched out and blotted, the foolscap wasted, the nights he counted the stars waiting for the right word. He told her about the few he had received in return, how Eliza’s surprise had been evident throughout despite the anodyne phrasing, the elegance of her hand, the fragrance that meant she had sprinkled each page with Florida water before folding it, how he had been stymied by her and had decided to plead with her for his release and the silence that had followed. He confessed he had wavered over telling her, Mary, about what he had done, afraid she would not have wanted it or that she would want it too much, that he would burden her and that she would never complain. The wick flickered in the dish, the shadows it cast filled with the potential for concealment or oppression. Mary shifted in the bed and moaned very softly. He interrupted himself to ask her what hurt and she was quiet again but he rested his hand on her brow and let her feel the coolness of it if she could.

He tried to explain how much he loved her and why; he admitted the words he chose, each singularly and even together, seemed to fall short of what his heart contained, but that he could not resist trying, again and again, to make it clear to her that she was his dearest. He praised her for her myriad admirable attributes and for her fewer flaws. He recited the lyrics she reminded him of, Keats and Shelley, fragments of Donne, told her she was his Dark Lady and how he wished she would wake to correct him or laugh or stop his mouth with her hand, her lips. He confided his dreams—of respectable marriage to her and a true, gracious home, the thousand small pleasures he’d never had and had never provided, of a courtship he conducted with his wedded wife, fresh flowers and trinkets, an extravagant bonnet lined in Nicholson’s blue, crates that he opened with a chisel, holding of texts from the Continent to fill her own library, the sawdust packing making them both sneeze and laugh, a spinet for her to play or decry the expense of, her face in every light, dawn and dusk and candle. He said she had made him wish for a child, as many as she wanted, but at least one with her dark eyes and rosy cheeks, to be called Papa and to be shown the day’s endeavors, to hear the clamor for treats and to meet above a small curly head her own eyes in silent consultation before relenting. He told her how he wished to kiss her and hold her, he allowed himself to say all the many ways he wanted to touch her, to bring her joy, every filthy, erotic desire he had for her, how he longed to hear her cry out his name as she felt him within, without, greedy for the delight he brought her, unquestioning that he would bring her the most exquisite gratification. He thought he might shock her awake with his paean to his conjugal yearnings, he might be greeted with a slap or a blush or even condemnation and he would try to hide his grin as he begged pardon, so glad she had returned to him; she lay quiet and he pressed his hand against her heart to feel it beat.

He was hoarse now and the depth of night was achieved, the early morning that was darker than any hour before midnight, when the stars drew back and the moon seemed ready to leave her orbit; it was a time of cold and wretched desperation. The little light in the room seemed dimmer. Mary’s chestnut hair looked black against the bed-linens and his eyes blurred with tears he didn’t dare to shed. He was failing her and the dawn would come without her, the first day without her of an endless life, a grief he wouldn’t survive. She would not have allowed herself this misery over his illness; she would find something within herself to sustain her, she would, even in their estrangement, have laid her hand on his bared, bowed neck if she had seen him and that was what he reminded himself of, that and Anne’s advice, less concerned with virtue than with life itself.

He lied. He declared a letter had arrived, just now, it had been lost or misplaced, and Samuel had brought it up or Henry, taking the stairs two at a time; Eliza had agreed to the divorce, had enclosed the legal papers, signed and witnessed. She was generous and did not reproach him, she asked for nothing and she sent a prayer for his well-being. He was free and he would be bound again, if only Mary would wake and tell him. McBurney had offered a special license, there was a house Miss Green had mentioned, only a few blocks away, where they could live and still work. Miss Dix could be gainsaid and as Mrs. Foster, she could remain at Mansion House or she could leave and arrange a school for the contraband children, treat the women who sought her, whatever she wanted, if she would only open her eyes… He had never had more conviction in his voice and he’d never thought a lie could feel so much like the truth.

He was exhausted. He drank another cup of water and felt the slide of it into his chest, cool between his lungs. He couldn’t think of another word to say and even Byron Hale would have pitied him, he imagined. Anne had been right; Mary’s fever had climbed steadily, terrifyingly through the hours, too high for her to be anything but delirious if she had woken. He didn’t bother pleading with God, who must have already known all He needed. Jed stood up and tried to feel the boards beneath his feet, the throbbing ache at his temple. There was so little left to him. All the nights he’d hoped to have with Mary, all the mornings, he’d given up, but there was one night left, one morning. It would be all he’d ever have; he did not think Mary, who had told him how much she cared in so many ways, would withhold this comfort if she could. He bent to remove his boots and unknotted his loose cravat, unbuttoned his vest and laid them on the chair. The bed was wide enough he would not crowd her, but he might have this—to hold the woman he loved in his arms, to rest beside her and feel her body, frail and burning, next to his, to stroke the silky hair at her crown, the loose strands from her plaits, to kiss her pale cheek below her closed eye and whisper in her ear,

“Sleep well, my dearest. I love you.”

He didn’t expect to sleep but it was something to be near to her. The bed held the scent of her illness but also her skin, the lavender sachet she must keep with her nightclothes. If he had not risen when morning came, it would be Anne at the door and he could hardly shock her with his behavior. There was little for her to gain bandying it about and he wouldn’t care what was said about him; Mary would be beyond reproach, beyond anything, for her fever would not break and so she must. He hadn’t expected to sleep but he did, confusion mingled with the most bereft sorrow when he became aware he had woken to the day he had not wanted, the compelling sensation of a hand stroking his head, solace he could not understand the origin of or why it was deserved. It was morning, full day, and though the door was shut, he saw there was a tray on the chest beside Mary’s bed with a cup, a pile of papers, and a small crockery jug with a cluster of blossoms, pink-tinged white petals and green leaves. _Christmas rose_ , his foggy mind supplied, the only flower that would bloom reliably with the winter’s coming, Emma’s work, Emma’s gift. He should not have been able to see it but he had moved in the night, the few hours left in it, and now he faced the worn mahogany drawers, felt beneath his cheek not the down pillow he remembered but the softness of a woman’s breast, the tranquil sound of her heartbeat. He had spoken so many words through the night, it seemed there were none left for this moment but he must say something to make sure it was real.

“Molly?”

His voice was rough, disbelief and hope inflecting it. The hand touching him, Molly’s hand, paused and rested against his sleep-tousled curls.

“Yes, Jedediah?”

At the sound of her voice, low and husky, clearly an effort for her, he shifted and pulled himself up so he could look at her. She drew her hand back and he saw it on the counterpane, missing her touch. She was lying on her back and there was a curious, tender expression in her dark eyes. He reached forward and touched her cheek, her forehead and felt the regular warmth of a low fever, nothing else. He could not help the tears that filled his eyes, that spilled onto his cheeks; she raised her hand to brush them away but she trembled with it and he took hold of her wrist instead and felt her pulse, quick but otherwise unremarkable before he pressed a kiss against the base of her thumb.

“Oh Molly, thank God. Thank God. I didn’t think,” he said, breaking off. 

He would tell her but not now and she would forgive him, the nurse in her understanding he could not weigh her down with anything additional when she had so recently been so close to death. He might be the physician a little longer. “Are you in any pain, how do you feel?”

“My head aches, I’m so tired, too tired to sleep it feels like. You look terrible,” she said. She was not entirely herself, her response made that clear, unless he considered that this was Mary uncensored by her own prudence and concern for another, as much herself as she could be. He would have said something but she spoke again. “You ought to drink something, there’s a cup there. I don’t like to see you this way, and I can’t do anything,” she added, fretful at the end, coughing a little.

“You’re the patient now, Molly, not the Head Nurse. It’s you who should have something to drink and take some medicine. Then I’ll drink something, I’ll do whatever you want,” he said, an odd combination of commanding and beseeching. He got out of the bed carefully to fetch what was needed, wishing for Anne’s expertise or Mary’s herself in arranging the pillows and blankets, but he could pour a cup of water and add the drops of willow-bark tincture, hold the cup to her mouth with one hand and put another behind her neck to help her drink, he could feel how she turned her cheek into his palm as he pulled back.

“ ‘S’bitter. I’ve been lying to the boys,” she murmured and he couldn’t help his smile.

“I should have put in some honey. Anne, Nurse Hastings left some for you. I make a poor nurse,” he said. He could not stop looking at her, the doctor in him cataloguing her condition, the man eager to divine what he could do for her, appreciating how her gaze illuminated her face, even drawn with her lengthy illness, weak and still suffering.

“I don’t agree. You took such good care of me, even though I’ve treated you so badly,” she said. “In the night…”

“You can’t think that, Molly. You’ve done nothing wrong and last night, I don’t know what I did, hardly anything,” Jed exclaimed. How much more skillfully she would have cared for him, she had, when he was in withdrawal from the needle and the archetype of a miserable patient while he had made a compress or two, talked to her like a guilty Catholic at confession, climbed in her bed for his own comfort.

“You did everything, Jedediah. I can’t remember it all, my head was hurting so dreadfully. I suppose the fever…Your voice, how you said my name, _Molly_ , _Molly_. You wouldn’t let me go, you said the sweetest things. I wanted you so and you came, you stayed,” she said. She was satisfied with so little, too little he thought. She was making too great an effort even now, to reassure him, when her health was still precarious, her soul clinging to life more powerfully than her flesh.

“Did you mean it?” Mary asked. 

He had never heard timidity from her and maybe he did not even now. Perhaps this was what it sounded like when she tried to steel herself for disappointment and had not the strength to lift her head from the pillow. She must be referring to the letter he said Eliza had written; she might doubt much but she could not doubt his sincerity about how he loved her, all those dreams… He couldn’t bear to tell her he had lied and he would have to. He looked away to consider how to say it without looking into those tired, vulnerable eyes and saw the stack of paper, the top few envelopes still sealed, travel-stained and creased. He would have presumed them to be from Mary’s family, perhaps Miss Dix writing to relieve Mary of her obligations as Head Nurse, but his eye recognized Eliza’s hand before he could form the thought that she had finally responded. He took up the letter and opened it, taking in the greeting on the heavy, fine stationery, “Dear Husband” and the abrupt beginning “I cannot refuse your request” at the same time as the thinner, yellower paper beneath, the government’s cheaper choice, headed “State of California.” He felt faint but not dizzy at the sudden awareness that his fondest, wildest wishes had become possible; he had never loved his wife more.

“Yes. I meant it. My, Eliza has written, she has agreed and started the legal proceedings. It’ll be a little while yet, but I think it will feel short,” he replied.

“Oh,” Mary said and closed her eyes. He couldn’t interpret her reaction but he was worried.

“Molly, what is it? Please tell me.”

“I hadn’t let myself imagine, not this…I can’t believe it,” she replied, forlorn as she’d rarely let him see her and it came to him there was no reason not to step closer, he could reassure her in a hundred ways now. He walked back to he bed and sat down, leaning over to put his arms around her, cradling her against his body. He brought her near enough he could speak just above a whisper.

“It’s true, my Molly. I love you with all my heart and there isn’t anything anymore that will keep me from telling you, showing you, I won’t ever keep anything from you again.” 

If she were well, he doubted he could have resisted embracing her more intimately but she was still very ill and she could tolerate only the gentlest caresses. She would live though, recover and thrive and he would make sure of it. Even to feel her now, the weight of her head in the crook of his elbow, the shape of her in the thin nightdress inspiring a lavish tenderness in him, a desire familiar only with her to nurture and confide in her everything that he was proudest of, everything that shamed him most.

“I was so scared you would listen to me, that you would leave me,” Jed added. She reached up the little distance, he thought to touch his face but her hand rested on his chest, where his heart beat, his soul commanding the elegant synchrony of the chambers _for her, for her, for her_.

“I told you I wouldn’t go. I won’t go, not without you. I shall find you in your dreams even, you will grow sick of me,” she replied, serious and yet managing a smile for him. He would give her honey next and some water, settle her down in the bed and open the door; he would call from the threshold for an orderly, Mr. Diggs, whichever nun passed by with her fresh grey habit fluttering like a gypsy moth’s wings, to bring hot broth for her and whatever porridge the officers were eating for his meal. He would find Anne to attend her again so he could see his patients and he would return with _Endymion_ to read to her until she slept contented and calm, he would watch her and let himself indulge in reveries he would save to tell her when she woke.

“Let’s have no more talk of sickness. You are charged to get well, for your sake and mine and the whole of Alexandria’s benefit, and I shan’t hear anything else,” he said, almost giddy. He laid her back down and prepared to rise to fetch the dwindling pot of honey, the tin cup of water when she spoke.

“You shan’t? For I have heard you say such _audacious_ things, Jedediah…I could not have dreamt them,” she said and he laughed. It was the first time in weeks but it felt natural to be amused and relieved, to see beneath the ravages of the typhus Mary’s invincible spirit, her quick, compassionate cleverness and her seemingly infinite capacity to grasp what he needed, how to convey that she understood him and loved him. He brought back the honey and filled the spoon; she would have mixed it in water or weak tea, but he didn’t.

“You didn’t. Dream them. Now take this. You should have something sweet to taste,” he said, bringing the spoon to her parted lips, “This will have to do until you are well enough to kiss.” She swallowed and looked up at him with her big dark eyes hazy with fatigue, the lingering fever, love, desire and the wonder of sanctioned union.

“Only this until we are married?” she asked.

“If that’s how long you want to wait. You will tell me when,” he said, eager to grant her the trust, the respect of his equal companion; she would know how he cherished her. She sighed and took his free hand in her smaller one, the first promise of many.

“I will. Tell you when,” and let her eyes drift shut, her breathing even, unlabored. Jed didn’t worry this time. When Anne Hastings came to the room an hour later, Mary slept peacefully, turned toward him, and he sat beside her in the uncomfortable chair he wished never to leave and said quietly,

“You were right. About everything. Thank you, Anne.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long overdue installment in my Daffodil Universe, following A Solemn Thing within the Soul; I admit that it has been a while since I've re-read the rest of them, but I'm fairly certain there are no glaring inconsistencies among the stories. This is an AU of Season 2, hence Charlotte and Clayton McBurney. I suppose I could end the series here, but let's face it, I probably will write at least one more "caboose" story. I direct readers wondering about 19th century divorce law to stories by emmadelosnardos among others; it's been established in the fandom that a California based divorce was plausible and I guess we'll see what the show says in a few weeks. The title is from Emily Dickinson. I have attached some more old-school notes for those interested:
> 
> Typhus is any of several similar diseases caused by Rickettsia bacteria. The name comes from the Greek typhus (τύφος) meaning smoky or hazy, describing the state of mind of those affected with typhus. The causative organism Rickettsia is an obligate intracellular parasitic bacterium that cannot survive for long outside living cells. It is transmitted to humans via external parasites such as lice, fleas, and ticks. While "typhoid" means "typhus-like", typhus and typhoid fever are distinct diseases caused by different genera of bacteria. Typhus was also a significant killer during the US Civil War, although typhoid fever was the more prevalent cause of US Civil War "camp fever". Signs and symptoms begin with sudden onset of fever, chills, headache, and other flu-like symptoms about 1 to 2 weeks after being infected. Five to nine days after the symptoms have started, a rash typically begins on the trunk and spreads to the extremities. This rash eventually spreads over most of the body, sparing the face, palms, and soles. Signs of meningoencephalitis begin with the rash and continue into the second or third weeks. Other signs of meningoencephalitis include sensitivity to light (photophobia), altered mental status (delirium), or coma. Untreated cases are often fatal.
> 
> Abigail Hopper Gibbons, (December 7, 1801 – January 16, 1893) was an American abolitionist, schoolteacher, and social welfare activist. She assisted in founding and led several nationally known societies for social reform during and following the Civil War. She traveled to Washington D.C., to help at the Washington Office Hospital, where she aided wounded officers and distributed supplies. She also helped to establish two field hospitals in Virginia. At Point Lookout, Maryland, the federal government took over a hotel and 100 guest cottages, converting them into a hospital complex with accommodations for 1500 soldiers. It was named Hammond General Hospital. Gibbons vied with Dorothea Dix, the Union Superintendent of Nurses, for control of the hospital. She finally gained an appointment as its head matron. In 1863 she left the facility after the hospital was adapted for use as the Point Lookout Confederate Prison.
> 
> John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death. Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. It begins with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever". Endymion is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter (also known as heroic couplets).
> 
> Helleborus niger, commonly called Christmas rose or black hellebore, is an evergreen perennial flowering plant in the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. Although the flowers resemble wild roses (and despite its common name), Christmas rose does not belong to the rose family (Rosaceae). The plant is a traditional cottage garden favourite because it flowers in the depths of winter.


End file.
